Reading a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair

They were nice enough people and all, but there wasn't much love in them. Because they were too busy being afraid. Love didn't grow very well in a place where there was only fear, just as plants didn't grow very well in a place where it was always dark.

I think most of us are fascinated by the macabre and by the weird and even the nastiness that comes along.

When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.

There are a lot of people in the field [ of horror stories] that I do read. There is a lot of stuff that is written in this field, though, that is not very good. You just have to look for the good stuff.

So do we pass the ghosts that haunt us later in our lives; they sit undramatically by the roadside like poor beggars, and we see them only from the corners of our eyes, if we see them at all. The idea that they have been waiting there for us rarely crosses our minds. Yet they do wait, and when we have passed, they gather up their bundles of memory and fall in behind, treading in our footsteps and catching up, little by little.

Cut him. Cut him while I stand here and watch. I want to see the blood flow. Don't make me tell you twice.